Heroes Will Try
by WhatComesFromWithin
Summary: Dennis mourns the loss of his brother, Colin, in the Leaky Cauldron before the start of his fourth year at Hogwarts. An unexpected visitor offers him comfort.


**This was written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments)**

**Beauty Therapy: Spa Day—Task 12: Destressing Shoulder/Neck Massage: Write about comforting someone.**

**Word Count: 1573**

**Warnings: Discussion of canon character deaths, intense grief**

Dennis stared forlornly at the table in front of him. He'd come to Diagon Alley alone today, to spare his parents the pain of remembering the first time they'd stepped foot there—with Colin. It was hard enough for Dennis to be there; he didn't need to be surrounded by his parents' false cheeriness, too.

He knew that it would be hard coming back, but he hadn't anticipated just how heavily his grief would weigh upon him here. Dennis ran a hand through his hair, feeling completely drained by his unadulterated sorrow.

Why had Colin stayed? He was only a fifth year, and he had known how dangerous the battle would be. Didn't he care enough about their parents—about _Dennis_—to leave, to protect himself, to live? What did Colin have to gain by fighting? What difference could he have made? Colin wasn't an expert duelist; he didn't even have any real dueling experience. So why had he done it? Why had he stayed?

Dennis screwed his eyes shut. He knew exactly why Colin had stayed.

_That's Harry Potter, Dennis. He's the Boy Who Lived. Isn't he cool?_

_Harry's so brave, fighting You-Know-Who. The world would be a better place if there were more people like him around. We could use a few more brave blokes. _

_The Ministry's crazy for saying all that stuff about Harry Potter and Dumbledore. _I _know that they're telling the truth._

_I gotta tell you something, Dennis, but you have to promise me you won't let it slip to anyone else. I joined Dumbledore's Army. Harry started it. You should join, too! _

_It's great that Harry is giving us a fighting chance, isn't it, Dennis?_

_I wish I was more like Harry Potter. He's a hero._

Colin had wanted to be a hero. He didn't want to be the kind of hero that Harry Potter was, who everyone adored and went crazy for. He didn't need to save the world to be happy. He'd just needed to feel like he had helped, to feel like he could be proud of what he had done.

When he thought about it, Dennis understood. He was a Gryffindor, too, after all—he also felt compelled to defend others, and he couldn't deny the fact that dueling gave him a pleasurable rush of adrenaline—but he also knew that there were other ways to be brave and help. Colin had only been a fifth year when he died. Hadn't anyone seen him? Surely there was someone who had noticed Colin, besides whatever Death Eater had killed him.

_Hey. Don't worry. I'll have your back Dennis, just like I know you'll have mine. Umbridge, Voldemort, whoever—they won't be able to get in between the two of us. _

Merlin, he should have been with him. Instead of waiting in the Hog's Head with his other classmates for news or other ways to help, he should have run back into the castle. Should have known when he couldn't find Colin right away that he had never left the castle to begin with. What kind of brother was he? Dennis was the one who was supposed to know Colin better than anyone else, yet he had deluded himself enough to endanger his older brother's life. Colin had died.

_I won't let you down, Dennis. You can always count on me. _

_But I let you down_, Dennis thought bitterly. _You couldn't count on me._

Something hot slipped down his cheek, and Dennis was brought back to reality. He was crying, in public. The realization didn't do anything to stop his crying. If anything, it just made him feel even more out of control. He needed to do something to ground himself, and fast. Dennis concentrated on his environment. He was sitting at a table in the Leaky Cauldron. The books he had just bought for his fourth year at Hogwarts were stacked in front of him. He could smell butterbeer and someone's soup. The edge of the chair he was sitting on dug into his thighs. He could hear a family talking animatedly at a table to his left. Someone's hand was resting on his shoulder.

Dennis' head snapped up. He turned to see Neville Longbottom looking at him worriedly, a hand hesitantly placed on Dennis' shoulder. His heart started beating faster. _Neville Longbottom was standing next to him._

"Hey, you all right, mate?"

Dennis scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm all right."

Neville looked skeptical. He pulled out the chair opposite of Dennis and sat down in it. "You're Colin Creevey's brother, right?"

Dennis flinched at the sound of his brother's name before nodding. "I'm Dennis."

Neville glanced around and his eyes landed on the stack of new school books next to him. Realization dawned in his eyes, and he began to nod to himself in understanding. "This is your first year without Colin."

Dennis' eyes started stinging again. "Yes," he agreed quietly. Another tear slid down his cheek, and if it was mortifying to be crying in public, then it was even more mortifying to be crying in front of one of the heroes from the war. That didn't make stopping crying any easier, though. Impatiently, Dennis brushed away the new tears, only growing more and more frustrated as new ones replaced the old.

Neville—who had moved his chair closer to Dennis' side when he began crying again—spoke softly, "It's okay to cry, Dennis. You lost a brother. No one can fault you for crying."

But he could fault himself. He knew, _he knew_, that something could have been done to prevent Colin's death, and he knew that his presence could very well have been that thing.

He met Neville's eyes briefly before glancing away again. "I should have been there," he murmured, "I should have _done_ something."

This time it was Neville who shook his head. "There was nothing you could have done, Dennis. Colin wasn't supposed to be there. You weren't, either. Don't blame yourself for the choices that he made. It'll just drive you mad."

Dennis met Neville's eyes, but this time he didn't look away. "I let him down," he said, agony saturating his voice. "We said we'd always have each other's backs, that we would always be there for each other, but I wasn't there when it mattered most. Now Colin is—is gone, and there's nothing I can do to fix it." His voice broke.

Despite all of the noise inside the Leaky Cauldron, Dennis heard nothing but the silence between himself and Neville. The longer the silence went on, the colder Dennis felt. Merlin, he had thought he was ready for this. He thought that enough time had passed, that he could function well enough without Colin to be able to go back to school. If this was any indicator, Dennis was anything but ready.

His eyes burned and his soul weighed heavily upon him. Before he lost Colin, he'd had a hard time understanding how grief could have such a huge effect on people. It wasn't tangible, after all. He'd thought that people could just shake it off like they'd be able to shake off any other emotion. But this...this really was like an enemy, attacking him when he least expected it, sometimes anticipated by him, other times not. Painful. Crippling. Always defeating him.

He wasn't a hero, and neither was Colin. Heroes won. They'd both lost.

"I didn't lose a brother," the hero said softly, breaking the longstanding silence between the two of them, "but I did lose people I cared a lot about. That I still care a lot about." Neville swallowed. "I lost Fred Weasley, a good friend. I lost Remus Lupin, the first teacher to ever believe in me. I lost Tonks, and for a moment, I thought I'd lost Harry." Neville's eyes looked wet. "And I lost Colin, too. He was a member of Dumbledore's Army, and we'll always be family. I miss him, too."

Dennis' throat felt tight.

"Before this war, I lost my parents. They were tortured into insanity during the first war by Bellatrix Lestrange. All I know about who they were comes from stories, and I'll never get to know them firsthand. They're lost to me, like how Colin is lost to you."

Dennis watched a single tear track its way down Neville's face, and Dennis distantly acknowledged what a mess they must look like to any outsiders, two teenagers crying in the Leaky Cauldron.

"I still should have been there," Dennis gasped out. "I should have been fighting alongside him, no matter the consequences."

Neville smiled sadly. "There was nothing you could do. You were following orders; you can't blame yourself because he didn't."

Deep down, Dennis knew that Neville was right. No matter what he had been thinking at the time, despite all of his reasons, Colin _had_ disobeyed orders. It felt wrong to place the blame for Colin's death on Colin, but maybe that was where it belonged. His killer was to blame for his death, but perhaps more fault lied with Colin than with Dennis.

"I guess you're right." Dennis laughed wetly. "I don't know how I'm going to be able to go back to Hogwarts."

Neville winced. "Yeah, mate, it'll be rough. But you'll get through it. For Colin. For you."

The corner of Dennis' mouth twitched up in response. "For me," he repeated.

"Yeah." Neville stood. "C'mon, mate. I'll buy you a butterbeer."


End file.
